Graphical Representations of Data
- The problem of how to display data in graphs and other visual representations is one of the most difficult ones, because of the wide variety of requirements from each user. As a result, no one solution has emerged, but many different packages are available. There are interfaces to existing plotting libraries, as well as Python-centered solutions.
Image Processing and Analysis
The [http://www.pythonware.com/downloads.htm#pil PIL Toolkit] provides a very powerful set of tools for manipulating images. [http://www.pythonware.com/library/pil/handbook/index.htm Documentation]
Plotting Tools
[http://old.scipy.org/site_content/chaco Chaco] is a device-independent 2D plotting package based on the DisplayPDF API being developed for Python by [http://www.enthought.com/ Enthought] with support from the [http://www.stsci.edu/resources/ Space Science Telescope Institute].
Konrad Hinsen has some plotting support in his [http://starship.python.net/~hinsen/ScientificPython/ ScientificPython] package, for example TkPlotCanvas.
Michael Haggerty has [http://monsoon.harvard.edu/~mhagger/download/ a Gnuplot module] which interfaces with [http://www.gnuplot.info the GNUPLOT package].
[http://php.iupui.edu/~mmiller3/python/#plotwrap plot_wrap] A module by Mike Miller which wraps the functions in [http://www.gnu.org/software/plotutils/plotutils.html the GNU plotutils] package.
[http://www.tcltk.com/blt/ BLT] BLT is an extension to the tk widgets that can produce X/Y plots and bar charts. The BLT package can be used through [http://pmw.sourceforge.net/ the Pmw package], a framework for the creation of megawidgets built on top of Tkinter.
[http://pyqwt.sourceforge.net/ PyQwt] is a set of Python bindings for the Qwt C++ class library which extends the Qt framework with widgets for scientific and engineering applications.
Also of Note
Janko Hauser maintains a list similar to this one of [http://starship.python.net/crew/jhauser/plot-res.html "Plotting with Python"] tools, from which much of the above was stolen (with permission).
There is an interface to the OpenGL library called [http://starship.python.net/~da/PyOpenGL/ PyOpenGL] that can be used to write sophisticated visualization tools from scratch.
The [http://fxpy.sourceforge.net/ FXPy] bindings to [http://www.cfdrc.com/FOX/fox.html the FOX GUI library] support OpenGL, so might be a good starting point for new applications.